PHOENIX (AP) — Aaliyah Ibarra’s family experienced a nomadic lifestyle, moving five times in just four years in search of stable housing. As Aaliyah was about to begin second grade at yet another new school, her mother, Bridget Ibarra, became increasingly concerned about the impact on her education.
At the age of 8, Aaliyah had not yet grasped the alphabet, a crucial foundation for her learning.
“She was in second grade and couldn’t identify any of the letters. When I pointed them out, she had no clue,” Bridget Ibarra recalled. “Although she could sing the alphabet song in order, she struggled when the letters were mixed up.”
RELATED STORIES
“I simply couldn’t distinguish which letters were which,” said Aaliyah, who is now 9. “But I know them now.”
Amidst the challenges faced by the Ibarra family, the COVID-19 pandemic added another layer of difficulty as Aaliyah commenced her school experience online. Being unfamiliar with computers, she encountered frequent disruptions during virtual classes, often getting kicked out of the virtual classroom. Her teachers complained that she wasn’t attentive to the screen and took excessive breaks.
Zoom school presented even more significant challenges for Aaliyah due to her homelessness, a situation shared by thousands of students across the country. Unfortunately, her school was unaware of her housing instability.
During the pandemic’s turmoil, homeless students like Aaliyah often slipped through the cracks as schools struggled to keep track of families facing unstable living conditions. Failing to identify these students as homeless resulted in them losing out on crucial support, such as transportation assistance, free uniforms, laundry services, and other forms of help.
Now, years later, the consequences of this oversight have multiplied. As students nationwide try to make up for the learning they missed during the pandemic, educators have lost valuable time in identifying those who need the most assistance. While schools are making efforts to offer tutoring and counseling, they now face a time constraint in spending federal pandemic relief funds allocated for homeless students, as mentioned by Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, a national homelessness organization.
“There is a sense of urgency due to the significant losses that occurred during the pandemic – learning setbacks, attendance gaps, and the overall health crisis,” Barbara Duffield emphasized. She pointed out that many education leaders are not even aware of the federal funds designated for homeless students, and these programs are set to expire next year.
According to federal data, the number of children identified as homeless by schools nationwide decreased by 21% from the 2018-2019 school year to the 2020-2021 school year, encompassing over 288,000 students. However, this decrease likely includes many children whose homelessness went unnoticed by schools. Notably, federal counts of homeless people living on the streets or in shelters appeared to decline in 2021 due to pandemic disruptions, but by 2022, those numbers sharply rose to the highest levels in a decade.
In Bridget Ibarra’s situation, she made the difficult decision not to inform the school that her kids were homeless. She noted that teachers, who were disconnected from students behind screens during online learning, never inquired about their living situation. Bridget was concerned that if the school learned her family was residing in a shelter, they would be legally obligated to provide transportation, possibly pressuring them to enroll in a different school closer to the shelter.
Bridget understood firsthand the challenges her kids faced with constant disruptions due to frequent moves. Her children would express their frustration, saying things like, “We’re moving again? We just moved!”
Aaliyah, expressing her experience, said, “When I moved, I missed my friends and my teacher.”
The stigma and fear associated with homelessness can lead families to keep their housing instability hidden from others, as pointed out by Barbara Duffield. She stressed that proactive identification of homeless children is crucial to ensure they receive the necessary support to succeed in school and even attend regularly.
Before the pandemic, Bridget Ibarra and her two children moved in with her brother in Phoenix due to financial struggles. Unfortunately, her brother passed away unexpectedly, and being pregnant with her third child, Bridget found it difficult to afford rent on her fast-food restaurant earnings.
The family sought refuge at Maggie’s Place, a shelter catering to pregnant women, where they spent the next six months. Afterward, they moved to Homeward Bound, an apartment-like shelter for families. The pandemic struck a few months before Aaliyah was set to start kindergarten, and her school, David Crockett Elementary, transitioned to online learning for her entire kindergarten year. Aaliyah and her older brother, along with other children, had to attend school virtually from a makeshift mixed-grade classroom at the shelter.
For Aaliyah’s mother, it felt like her daughter wasn’t even attending school during this period. She repeatedly asked the school for additional academic support for Aaliyah, attributing her struggles to the challenges of online learning. She also felt that the school was giving more attention to her older brother, who had been designated as a special education student with an individualized education program (IEP).
The school’s principal, Sean Hannafin, explained that they frequently met with the children’s mom and offered the available support. However, identifying students’ specific needs online was challenging, and they preferred to observe the students in-person when they returned to the school setting.
A federal law exists to ensure that homeless students have equal access to education, providing them with rights and services despite their unstable housing situation. However, many students are not identified as homeless when they enroll in school. In the traditional school setting, teachers, staff, cafeteria workers, aides, or bus drivers may notice signs that indicate a student’s well-being may need attention. However, these signs were often missed during online learning.
The overall drop in the number of students identified as homeless began before the pandemic, but the decline was more pronounced in the first full school year after COVID-19 hit. The percentage of enrolled students identified as homeless in the U.S. decreased from 2.7% in 2018-2019 to 2.2% in 2020-2021.
In Arizona, there was a significant reduction in the number of students identified as homeless, but there were signs that many families were experiencing distress. KateLynn Dean, who works at Homeward Bound, reported that the shelter witnessed a surge in the number of families dealing with homelessness for the first time during the pandemic.
Eventually, Bridget Ibarra had to make the difficult decision to enroll Aaliyah in a different school. Last year, the family was forced to leave low-income housing when the property owner sold the building. They temporarily lived with Bridget’s mother before finding another low-income unit in Chandler, which was more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of Phoenix.
However, the process of enrolling Aaliyah in her new school was far from smooth. Due to delays in obtaining transcripts, she missed the first three weeks of the school year last fall. Bridget insisted that Aaliyah should not start the year without a plan to address her delays in reading and writing. During this time, Aaliyah spent her days playing and sitting around the house.
“Honestly, Aaliyah said she didn’t care how long it took because she didn’t want to go to that school anyway,” her mother shared. Aaliyah missed her friends and had grown weary of constantly moving from place to place.
At Aaliyah’s new school, Frye Elementary, Principal Alexis Cruz Freeman witnessed firsthand the challenges of staying connected with families when students were not physically attending classrooms. Several students even disappeared from the school system entirely. However, Principal Freeman noted that families have started to re-engage with the school. In the last school year, the state of Arizona reported that more than 22,000 students were identified as homeless, which was twice as many as the previous year.
Throughout their turbulent journey, Bridget tried her best to shield her kids from discomfort related to their living situation. Her efforts seem to have worked, as Aaliyah doesn’t recall many details about the different places they’ve stayed, but rather remembers the people who surrounded her family during those times.
Aaliyah has shown significant academic progress since joining her new school, according to Principal Alexis Cruz Freeman. Although she still faces challenges with pronouncing and recognizing certain words, by the end of the school year, Aaliyah was able to read a text and write four sentences based on its meaning. In addition, she is now performing at grade level in math.
Principal Cruz Freeman views Aaliyah as a success story, attributing part of her achievements to her mother’s unwavering support. Bridget Ibarra’s advocacy for her children played a crucial role in Aaliyah’s academic growth and overall development.
“She was a dedicated advocate for her children, which is all that we can ever ask for,” said Principal Cruz Freeman, acknowledging the immense impact of parental involvement and support in a student’s educational journey.
